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11. Do we need to accept
Weber's interpretation of the dilemma facing modern subjectivity and its task
of making modern individal life meaningful after the collapse of tradition and
other inter-subjectively binding worldviews like religion? Confronting the
modern division of labor and the increasing rationalisation of culture with its
increasingly sphere immanent norms and rules, Weber opts for the notion of an
individual existential choice. The
subject must form his or her own life meaningfully within a chosen value sphere
around a single value i.e. art, science, politics, etc. Weber resists the
temptation to make this choice romantic: he speaks of its rigors in a stoic
voice. Such commitment is entirely without glamour. It involves the asceticism
that comes with prosaic and Sisyphean specialisation. For example, in the
domain of science it involves the total commitment of a large slice of life in
training and research in pursuit of an elusive goal that may never be attained.
Without an inner drive such a choice can turn into a destructive nightmare of
self-waste. Achievement in such a life does not generate ultimate satisfaction.
Scientific achievement is transitory with inbuilt obsolescence. Rapidly
changing horizons of modern knowledge cannot answer the fundamental question
about the meaning of life. This question forever remains beyond the sphere of
science.
12. However, despite
Weber's efforts to describe such a choice as unglamorous: in the light of its
complexities, its prosaic aspects, its ultimate existential dissatisfaction,
there remains a compelling romantic element. The very idea of the calling as a
sort of redemption (the elevation of the individual to meaning), the scale of
the sacrifice and the asceticism of the challenge ensures that only the exceptional
and the driven will bear it. Remember Weber's choice of the term “Beruf”
(calling) is quite deliberate. He takes over the charismatic connotations of
religious vocation into the wider mundane world of science and politics and
represents it in absolutist terms: the passion of this total commitment
elevates the choice into something that is really meaningful. Here the exception becomes the rule.
Total commitment has its own grandeur. This is a wager of life involving a sort
of self-abandonment and self-transcendence that brings this value choice into
conflict with other important values, creating meaning.
13. Is Weber's
vision convincing? While the vision of heroic commitment is, perhaps seductive,
I want to argue that it is precisely these romantic elements and the residual
quasi-religious absolutism of his notion of vocation that narrows options and
results in distortion. Let's start with the exclusivity of the choice. Weber
interprets the task facing the modern subject as an exclusive choice of a value
sphere (science, politics, art, religion, and eroticism). Weber does not
consider everyday life as a sphere because we do not choose the everyday but
rather inhabit it by necessity: we cannot help but dwell in it. Furthermore,
for Weber, the everyday is not an exemplary way of life that creates meaning.
Weber prohibits mixing or crossing spheres because of the conflicting character
of the norms they presuppose and also because real achievement demands utter
dedication in a specialised area. However, for many, the idea that their life
be a singular project devoted to the service of a single value sphere seems at
odds with a satisfaction and a meaning derived from close intersubjective bonds
and acts of friendship, love and care. These also bestow upon an individual
feelings of value, esteem, respect and singularity. There can be little question that Weber valued these bonds.
However, he seems to build a wall between them and vocation that could only be
humanly crippling for many of us. This seems to be a consequence of his
emphasis on the demands of specialisation. In the era of rationalisation, Weber
wants to rigorously uphold the notion of specialisation and this proscribes the
idea of mixing callings or of mixing the calling with everyday life. As a result,
Weber's modern subject become unnecessarily a mono-centred individual who
chooses one way of life for good and also denies themselves the possibility of
participating in other spheres by a sort of self-imposed rigid specialism and a
resulting ethical constraint. Clearly Weber is right that in the modern age of
specialisation it is almost impossible for any individual to serve "two
deities" with the same devotion. Nevertheless, this is a practical
inhibition. There is no good theoretical reason why all individuals should
become mono-centred. Clearly it is possible and may well be desirable for many
modern individuals to change vocations, to be active in two or more spheres
obeying their inner spheric rules and norms depending on interests and talent
without chasing for perfection in any single one. Such a solution must be
especially attractive to women who typically bear the greater weight of hard
choices between specialisation/career and child bearing/rearing. This is
clearly an obvious practical and life enriching solution to the problem of
choosing between different specialist cultural spheres in a way that is not so
absolutely focused on the exemplary personality and the highest level of
vocational achievement.
14. Secondly, we
must focus on what I shall call Weber's redemptive subjectivism. After the
collapse of traditional worldviews, Weber shifts the task of creating meaning
on to the exemplary individual. This is a very heavy load indeed and almost
beyond the power of the single individual. Weber overcomes this problem with
the notion of "calling": the individual must choose a value-sphere
and it is the passionate devotion to that sphere which both elevates the
subject beyond mere subjectivity and infuses life with meaning. After the
decline of religion, cultural spheres are the closest the individual can come
to supra-individual meaning. The residual religiousity of this view is clear.
It is marked by what Nietzsche called ascetic ideals. Weber asks the individual
to bear an unrealistic weight. On the one hand, Weber's uncalled subject is too
much like the weak creature of the Christian tradition. On the other, Weber
underplays the role of intersubjective relations in the creation of a
meaningful life and, as we have suggested, the way in which a range of social
bonds and commitments also richly add to the meaningfulness both of an
individual life and to social life more generally.
15. To the extent
that Weber takes up the problem of meaning on a societal level this finds
expression in his political thought on leadership. Modern society is
characterized by galloping rationalization and bureaucratisation. Weber’s response is the call to sustain
and nurture charisma. Weber recognises the efficiency of bureaucracy in getting
things done smoothly, consistently and expertly in mass complex societies. He
notes the way in which the politics of the machine and the specialists of the
state in war, finance and law proved their superiority over the regimes of
notables and dilettantes time and time again. However, he also believes that
the bureaucrats for all their devotion to public service and the chain of
command have their own interests, logic and a dulling resistance to creative
initiative beyond the system, rules and conventionality. Their discipline depends
upon individual creativity and autonomy. As already said, for Weber, charisma
is the only available antidote to bureaucratic ossification. Weber believed
that with the threat of universal bureaucratisation it was crucial to preserve
the maximum amount of social dynamism by maintaining social and political
competition wherever possible. This general diagnosis was located in his
specific critique of recent German political history.
16. With
rapid economic modernization the aristocratic Junkers were a decaying ruling
class that no longer possessed the capacity to further Germany's real national
interests. Yet they remained the dominant political force with great influence
in the army and bureaucracy. Bismarck's victory represented a historic defeat
of the German bourgeoisie and of German liberalism. He had stifled genuine
parliamentary politics and this had left Germany without great political
leaders. After Bismarck's demise the aristocratic bureaucrats had been able to
manipulate a weak and vacillating Kaiser. The only way to make good this lack
in Germany was to activate civil society and introduce aggressive parliamentary
democracy that would cultivate real charismatic leaders with a calling for
politics. This situation reached a crisis point during the war with the
eventual revolutionary overthrow of the imperial regime in 1918. Throughout
this whole period Weber was an advocate of the real democratisation of Germany.
However increasingly he came to focus less on broad economic and political
reforms and more on the creation of conditions that would produce leaders with
a calling. For example, to counteract the encroachment of bureaucracy in the
civil service and the party machine and its impact on the quality of political
leadership, Weber advocated the idea of plebicitarian democracy. According to this model, political
leaders supported by the mass party machines would gain their authority and
legitimacy directly from the consensus/acclamation of the people rather than
being the complete servants of these party bureaucracies. This would provide
leaders with real political ability with the leverage to really transform
political reality, to change society's direction, to foster new values and
avoid the twin dangers of progressive bureaucratisation and leaderless modern
mass democracy.
17. For Weber,
modernity had undercut the conditions that had sustained classical liberal
democracy. The real meaning of his thesis of the "loss of freedom"
was that the classical ideal of "individual self-determination" and
the "popular will” was now virtually obsolete. They had lost much of their
practical meaning because modern conditions were so much more complex, the
weight of the combined objective logics of economic, technological and
bureaucratic processes was so great and inescapable, and individuals were
inevitably and necessarily interdependent. Weber acknowledges the Tocqueville
point about the atomisation of the modern individual in mass democracy and the
need to energise a healthy civil society. But, unlike Tocqueville, he thinks
it naive to believe the mass individual could have much influence on the
corporate entities and complex processes of modern mass politics. In any case,
Weber is a radical sceptic when it came to the concept of democratisation. His
argument was that the demos itself in the sense of an inarticulate mass never
actually governs: all that changes is the methods of the selection of executive
leaders and the influence which various circles within the demos are able to
exert. Democratisation does not therefore necessarily mean a greater active
share of the governed in political authority. In this situation, Weber argued
the only realistic alternative was the form of constitutional democracy in
which people would be able to choose in a formerly free way the leaders who
seemed best able to represent their interests and aspirations and robust civil
debate would engender the leaders with real political calling. Rather than
allow the faceless bureaucrat without a political calling and without real
responsibility de facto political power, Weber preferred the presidential style
direct election of political leaders. Those who possessed a real political
calling, who were sufficiently charismatic to emotionally bind the masses and
convince their supporters of their qualifications to rule, could proceed
according to their own discretion as long as they maintained the trust of the
masses. If they lost that trust, their political career would be finished.
18. In Weber's
theorization of democracy we perceive almost the inversion of its classical
meaning. In their classical sense the ideas of individual self-determination
and popular will represented a process of legitimisation and policy formulation
from the bottom up, from the electors to their candidates by a sort of
delegation. Weber clearly believed that this model was no longer viable. While
he retains the idea of the formerly free election of leaders and a dynamic
civil society, he believes that modern politics is a complex arena for
specialists-- for those with a calling for politics. If the great threat of
universal rationalisation and bureaucratisation are to be met and held at bay,
modern society requires leadership and charisma. Modern politics, itself
subject to the inroads of bureaucratisation-- the increasing importance of the
party machine and the public service, of specialists in various aspects of
public business like finance, law, diplomacy--can sustain it own vitality only
if openings are preserved and facilitated for charismatic leadership. Yet here
again Weber asks the individual in the shape of charismatic leadership to
achieve almost the impossible. If bureaucratisation is to effectively be
resisted the struggle must be taken up on a wider front than mere leadership.
In Germany at this time what was required was a range of institutional changes
both economic and political to reduce the power of the Junker's and facilitate
the birth of democratic forces and associations. Weber saw universal
bureaucratisation as the great threat in modernity. Ironically and tragically,
he completely ignored what, with hindsight, has turned out to be an equally
significant danger-- the totalitarian charismatic dictator -- the individual
who takes over or usurps control of the vast bureaucratic machine of modernity
using it for criminal sectional or irrational ends. Thus while Weber advocated
a vigorous parliamentary democracy and rigorous civil debate, his
pre-occupation with charisma and leadership in modern mass society distorts his
commitment to, and understanding of, democracy.
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